My life lately has been a mixture of formal work in the school and after school programs as well as lots of informal work, such as getting to know people and identifying areas in the community that need to be strengthened. I continue teaching PE classes which exhausts me every time (these kids have a lot of energy and little discipline) and I have also taught some English classes to 7th and 6th graders. The government says that starting in 6th grade the kids must learn English, however the teachers at the school right now were trained to teach a specific subject in the high school and so they never learned English and cannot teach it very well. I am trying my best to teach the kids the basics, but there is very little time in the day to teach them.
I have also filled in every once in a while at the after school program and continue meeting with youth twice a week to plan events and organize “charlas” or “talks”. I had discussed with the boys organizing a baseball tournament, because in past years the older boys always played a tournament that lasted several weekends in December and January, but in the past couple years no one has taken the leadership of it and last year the tournament didn't happen at all. With a little guidance from me, the boys planned what they needed to do in order to begin the tournament (the most work was cutting all the grass that had grown on the baseball field—the boys probably put in 15 hours cutting the grass with machetes) and by the time I had returned from Thanksgiving the tournament had been planned and they played that Saturday for the first time. I was so happy to see them organizing it almost completely by themselves, all they needed was a little help from me to begin with, but then they took off! They have three teams that play two games every weekend, and they are keeping some stats and at the end the winning team with receive a trophy and the most valuable player will receive a medal.
The after school program funded by foreign donors also organized a volleyball team for the girls in the community, and I am serving as referee when the girls play. The games, though there are no lines and a very low net, get very heated, yesterday I had 4 girls screaming at the top of their lungs at me and each other about a call I made. Luckily they forget about it quickly and move on to the next point where they are cheering because they won.
Informally I have spent time getting to know more people and learning a little bit of Kreyol. Also, because it is the end of the semester a lot of the high schoolers are studying for exams or filling out take home exams that I have been helping with. I am beginning to understand why people put their kids in private schools if they can here, because there is very little support and instruction in the public schools. For example, the kids are supposed to learn English in school, but the professor gives them very little instruction and then a difficult take home exam. A lot of these kids have come to me to have me fill out the take home exam because they have absolutely no idea how to do it. Another thing; the kids have to pay for the take home exam (30 pesos each, about a dollar) which they can basically have anybody (such as a native English speaker) fill out, while the kids who do not pay have to take a monitored exam during the school day. This kind of system makes me very greatful for how demanding and dedicated my teachers were in the US!
The next couple weeks involve a trip to the beach to relax a little, and then lots and lots of Christmas activities (the public school, after school program and the church school are all making food and giving gifts to the kids)!
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